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From https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/14phpbq/how_is_it_possible_that_roughly_50_of_americans/

Question above is pretty blunt but was doing a study for a college course and came across that stat. How is that possible? My high school sucked but I was well equipped even with that sub standard level of education for college. Obviously income is a thing but to think 1 out of 5 American adults is categorized as illiterate is…astounding. Now poor media literacy I get, but not this. Edit: this was from a department of education report from 2022. Just incase people are curious where that comes from. It does also specify as literate in English so maybe not as grim as I thought.

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[-] wolfylow@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

This can’t be true.

I’m not American but does 6th grade mean about 11?

[-] seafoam_green@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago

That's correct (11 years old) - I do believe this, though (or at least that it's mostly accurate). I don't think we get a really clear picture of this group online - they're probably not going to be posting a lot on the major text-focused social media networks (including facebook, for example).

To me it seems like it's not so much about city vs. rural but about rich vs. poor. One thing that's really fucked up to me is how school funding in the US is generally heavily based on the property taxes from the immediate area - so areas that are already rich get the best schools, and poorer areas have worse. I don't believe the situation will change anytime soon, unfortunately.

[-] Meuzzin@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

This. We used a friend's address in a different city and area (very upper class) with top rated schools, to send our children. As the Schools in our area were quite bad. We lived in a middle class neighborhood too. The difference was night and day...

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[-] MaxPower@feddit.de 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[-] PhoenxBlue@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago

The powers that be want to eliminate schools all together. They don't need a literate labourer. Soldier just need to recognize the alphabet. (I mean this in the most basic of terms. I'm not desparaging anyone.)

They don't want "free thinking" people in their society. If anyone remembers 'Divergent'. If not, look into it. It's not too far off.

[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 9 points 1 year ago

Unironically relevant

[-] jaybob@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

In my experience, there’s also a poverty component. Some families may have to move into a shelter in a different school district or even state. Within that you can stay at a shelter for a short and long time. Education is also not usually a focus of the family, or theres not enough time. So you have a situation where you are constantly moving places and schools, and your family doesn’t take any time to teach reading outside of school for whatever reason.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

Go look at content that is considered a specific reading level. It may shock you to find that a lot of it is not considered a high reading level.

[-] gsa32@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Shit public education system

[-] Zarxrax@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

There are a lot of old people in America. My grandparents didn't go to high school. It wasn't really considered necessary back then. We also have a lot of immigrants who may not necessarily be able to speak English well, let alone read it.

I would imagine that if you look at literacy rates of just young people, they would likely be a lot higher. Still, we do still have a lot of high school dropouts these days, but those numbers have been improving a lot. (According to this, the dropout rates have decreased about 10% over the past decade: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi/high-school-graduation-rates )

[-] average650@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

High school drop outs should be literate.

[-] mochi@lemdit.com 5 points 1 year ago

Probably a combination of flat out retards and recent immigrants for whom English is a second language.

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[-] zepheriths@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

It's not just that. It's not understanding words either. One example that Annoys me to no end is when I tell someone to flip a card over and they rotate it. This is in a upper middle class neighborhood. ( Just to be clear on the definition a card being rotated turns around the y-axis. Fliping a card rotates it around it's z-axis) while the issue is clearly there it's a bit more complicated than bad schools clearly.

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[-] benvoyondon@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

@toosoon You must be ill-informed, quite biased and in favour of Québec bashing. The government has English translations available for its minority in “La belle province”. Educate yourself. The information is out there.

http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/site_web/documents/publications/DepStatAlpha_eng.pdf

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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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